Letters
Secular support for ban
It must be understand that the proposed ban on religious symbols in French state schools is not just a ban on the muslim hijab, although this has excited the most controversy. It is also a ban on the jewish skullcap and "ostentatious" christian crosses.
It must be understood in the context of French history: in particular the long and bitter struggle for a secular, democratic republic which dates back to the revolution of 1789 and takes in the revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871. What the ban does is clarify and strengthen the law of 1905 on the separation of church and state. This was the work of the government of Emile Combes, a doctor, radical and freemason, and the Bloc des Gauches. The Radical Party, later the Radical and Socialist Party, was the most democratic and secular wing of republicanism.
French socialism inherited this tradition. The French Socialist Party of Jean Jaurès stood for social transformation, republican defence and the social republic. It was said that there were two Frances. One was democratic, republican and secularist. The other was religious, reactionary and monarchist.
Freemasonry, long at war with the church hierarchy, was a great influence. Masonic banners flew on the walls of Paris in 1871 and French masonry abandoned the Great Architect of the Universe in favour of atheism.
President Chirac has stated in a new year address: "It is not a matter of refounding or changing the boundaries of secularism. It is simply a matter of France staying true to a balance that has been established over decades and reaffirming a principle with respect but also resolutely." Perhaps Chirac is taking his clue from Robespierre, who said in 1794 that only the fatherland has a right to educate its children. Chirac, of course, is no Robespierre, let alone a Marat or a sans culottes wearing the red cap of liberty and spiking aristocrats with a pike. But to retain a measure of political credibility he has had to place himself in the French republican tradition.
The ban not only has the support of secularists. Many christians and the Union of Jewish Students (France has the largest Jewish population in Europe) support it. Nor is the muslim world entirely united in its opposition to the ban. Sheik Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the grand mufti of the Al Azhar mosque in Cairo and a leading expert on sunni islam, has stated that, while muslim women have a religious obligation to wear the hijab, this applies only in muslim countries; and women who obey French law need not fear divine retribution.
A number of French women of muslim origin have signed a statement supporting the ban and defending the right of 1.7 million muslim French women not to wear the hijab. These include Loubna Meliane, a spokesperson for SOS Racisme; Fadela Amra, a leader of Ni Putes Ni Soumises; the actress Isabelle Adjani; and Chahdott Djavann, author of A bas le voile (Down with the veil).
They argue that the hijab condemns women to intolerable discrimination which denies them freedom and dignity. They demand that Chirac unreservedly supports secularism and equality between the sexes.
The hijab is clearly a symbol of oppression based on the absurd idea that the sight of female hair would lead men into the type of temptation allegedly suffered by the biblical Adam. This supposed temptation has served as the excuse for the oppression of women in all the religions of the book. The skullcap and the cross are also symbols of oppression. The skullcap symbolises the oppression of the Hebrews by the Levite priesthood of Judea. The tribe of Levi got to be priests for slaughtering the worshippers of the golden calf after Moses got back from receiving the law from Yahweh on Mount Horeb. The cross was a Roman instrument of execution on which Yeshua bar Yosif, if he ever existed, was done to death. The only educational value they have is as means to teach people the oppressive nature of religion.
If religion is a private matter, then its proper place is in private - in the home or the place of worship, not in the schools of a secular state. However, religion is not entirely a private matter. It is a question of what role it plays in class society. By promising the masses a reward in a mythical afterlife, religion serves the ruling class by keeping them passive in this life. If they get out of line they are threatened with eternal hellfire and damnation. When the church held power, hellfire was made all too real by the pyres of the inquisition. Women regarded as witches and heretics, atheists included, were condemned. St Paul's injunction to be of one mind found its realisation in the executions by fire of Mary Tudor.
Socialism is nothing if it is not materialist science. As such it demands an intransigent and unyielding struggle against superstition, obscurantism and idealism of all sorts. This was the struggle waged by British socialists such as Guy Alred, John Gott and FA Ridley and in the USSR by the Society of the Militant Godless who sought to free the minds of the Soviet masses from the feudal ideological grip of orthodox christianity. Anything which weakens the influence of religion in society and the power of the clergy over their flocks is to be welcomed, not opposed on the basis of a spurious libertarianism. Socialism does not mean anyone can do what they like. It means the rule of laws made by the victorious working class in its own interests and those of society as a whole. Those who choose to defy these laws must suffer the consequences.
In 1905, the year the French laws on separation of church and state were being enacted, Rosa Luxemburg wrote in Socialism and the churches: ""¦ from the moment the priests use the pulpit as a means of struggle against the working class, the workers must fight against the enemies of their rights and liberation. For he who defends the exploiters and helps to prolong this present regime of misery is the mortal enemy of the proletariat, whether he be in a cassock or the uniform of the police." This is a lesson today's socialists need to take to heart and act upon. It is the clergy who are the flics and mouches of capitalism, not the comrades of Lutte Ouvrière. To call comrades who fought bravely on the barricades of 1968 "Jacques Chirac's policemen" is not polemic: it is an insult unworthy of comrade Manson (Weekly Worker January 8).
Society may have progressed beyond the point where it was necessary to strangle priests with the guts of kings. But socialists still have the task of driving gods from the skies and capitalists from the earth. When the hijab, the skullcap and the cross and all symbols of religious oppression are consigned to the flames, and the Sepher Torah - on which judaism, christianity and islam are based - is consigned to the attentions of worms and mice, only then will humanity be happy; only then will it be free.
Terry Liddle Socialist Secular Association
Two sides of same repression
In response to Peter Manson's article I would like to add a few comments ('Jacques Chirac's Lutte Ouvrière policemen' Weekly Worker January 8). I believe that no one calling themselves left can support the ban on islamic or other religious manifestations for the following reasons:
1. We on the left must support political freedoms without any ifs and buts. Freedom is indivisible, even where the act may be contrary to one's own beliefs. Freedom can only be curtailed where it interferes with the rights and freedoms of others. Clearly the hijab - or cross or skullcap - does not come under this category.
2. While undoubtedly the hijab is often enforced on the girls, banning it in state schools will only help drive the coercers into segregating the girls into private religious schools, which will strengthen the hand of the fundamentalists: that is, these young women will be removed from an environment in which they could become empowered to resist religious coercion.
3. The relinquishing of outdated and inherently oppressive customs is only possible through a conscious process of rejection, which can only come out of an open confrontation. It can not be achieved through some 'enlightened despotism', which is precisely what has been enacted in France.
4. The law passed in France is fundamentally analogous to laws passed by repressive 'islamist' regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran which ban the absence of the hijab. Both belong to a totalitarian mentality, where the state knows what is best for the individual - and enforces it with a whip. No wonder the reactionary clerics in Al Azhar university have welcomed the move. It vindicates their own policy of enforcing the hijab. The enforced wearing of the hijab and the enforced 'de-hijabing' are two sides of the same reactionary and undemocratic coin.
5. The left fighting for a secular society must fight for the total right of individuals to dress as and how they like. This is a fundamental human right where the boundary of the individual and the state is sharply demarcated.
6. The left must also fight for the right of the individuals to hold, or not to hold, whatever religious beliefs they have, while at the same time relentlessly fighting against all forms of superstition - of which religion is in the forefront.
This is a battle of ideas which is muddied by muddled thinking in response to 'state knows best' coercive legislation, one example of which we are seeing in France. We need to resist the totalitarian right by confronting the totalitarian left - even those with good intentions.
Mehdi Kia co-editor Iran Bulletin-Middle East Forum
Two sides of same repression
Two sides of same repression
Counterdemonstration
On January 17, islamists have called for demonstration in London to protest the French government's decision to introduce a law banning conspicuous religious symbols in state schools and state institutions. They claim this ban is discriminatory, against women's equal rights, violates women's and girl's rights to education and work, restricts religious freedom and is even anti-pluralism and secularism. All these claims are false and in fact a mockery of the very principles they feign to defend. Ironically, the very islamic movement that is renowned for intimidating, terrorising and violating women and girls and their rights, is using norms that are antithetical to its belief system and practice in order to maintain its repressive laws and clothing on women and girls.
Clearly, religion, religious symbols and religious freedoms are private affairs not the affairs of a state. In fact states are duty-bound to ensure that all religious symbols be abolished from state-run institutions and schools. This is an important aspect of secularism and not vice versa. Also, contrary to claims that it is discriminatory, the ban in fact reverses the discriminatory effects of religion on women and girls. Moreover, maintaining secularism has nothing to do with racism. It is in fact racist to create different laws for religious and islamic communities in the west and obstruct the access of women and girls in particular to the advances of civilised societies. Finally, protecting girls from the veil goes beyond issues relating to secularism and addresses the rights of the child from having religious views and clothing imposed on her by her parents through no choice of her own. The Organisation of Women's Liberation-Iran and the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq are confident that the proposed law by the French government is a step towards establishing a secular society. Secularism is one precondition for a free society and women's equality. The enforcement of this ban will be a first step towards this though it must be extended to include the banning of religious schools and the prohibition of child veiling. We must not allow religious extremism and political islam to spread the rule of religion in society by means of intimidation, blackmail and threats. Religion must be relegated to a private matter. Religion must be separated from the state and educational system.
We invite all freedom-loving individuals and organisations to join us in counter-demonstrations on the same day in several countries, including England, Germany, Sweden and Norway.
Organisation of Women's Liberation-Iran Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq Day of protest - No to hijab ban Picket called jointly by Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Women Association Saturday January 17, 11am to 2pm. London: French embassy, 58 Knightsbridge Road, London SW1. Edinburgh: French consulate, 11 Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7TT